and that the child who desires to beat people now will desire to kill them when he is grown up.] only things; and he soon learns by experience to respect those older and stronger than himself.  Things, however, do not defend themselves.  Therefore the first idea he needs is not that of liberty but of property, and that he may get this idea he must have something of his own.”  It is useless to enumerate his clothes, furniture, and playthings; although he uses these he knows not how or why he has come by them.  To tell him they were given him is little better, for giving implies having; so here is property before his own, and it is the principle of property that you want to teach him; moreover, giving is a convention, and the child as yet has no idea of conventions.  I hope my reader will note, in this and many other cases, how people think they have taught children thoroughly, when they have only thrust on them words which have no intelligible meaning to them. [Footnote:  This is why most children want to take back what they have given, and cry if they cannot get it.  They do not do this when once they know what a gift is; only they are more careful about giving things away.]

We must therefore go back to the origin of property, for that is where the first idea of it must begin.  The child, living in the country, will have got some idea of field work; eyes and leisure suffice for that, and he will have both.  In every age, and especially in childhood, we want to create, to copy, to produce, to give all the signs of power and activity.  He will hardly have seen the gardener at work twice, sowing, planting, and growing vegetables, before he will want to garden himself.

According to the principles I have already laid down, I shall not thwart him; on the contrary, I shall approve of his plan, share his hobby, and work with him, not for his pleasure but my own; at least, so he thinks; I shall be his under-gardener, and dig the ground for him till his arms are strong enough to do it; he will take possession of it by planting a bean, and this is surely a more sacred possession, and one more worthy of respect, than that of Nunes Balboa, who took possession of South America in the name of the King of Spain, by planting his banner on the coast of the Southern Sea.

We water the beans every day, we watch them coming up with the greatest delight.  Day by day I increase this delight by saying, “Those belong to you.”  To explain what that word “belong” means, I show him how he has given his time, his labour, and his trouble, his very self to it; that in this ground there is a part of himself which he can claim against all the world, as he could withdraw his arm from the hand of another man who wanted to keep it against his will.